You are currently browsing the monthly archive for December, 2006.
The Pump Handle is taking the remainder of the year off.
We wish all of our readers and friends a healthy, peaceful 2007.
By David Michaels
In July, two unions, backed by a group of scientists, petitioned both federal OSHA and California OSHA to issue rules to protect workers from diacetyl, the chemical implicated in dozens of cases of lung disease in the food industry (See our earlier post “Artificial Butter Flavor is (Still) Killing Workers”).
Federal OSHA continues to do nothing. Earlier this month, a group of us met with several high level OSHA officials, who told us that the agency was still considering our petition. In other words, no action planned.
California, however, is moving forward.
The biggest news in science and public health was the tragic, though not unexpected, guilty verdict in the Libyan trial of six medics accused of deliberately infecting patients with HIV. Several members of the scientific community, mobilized by Nature reporter Declan Butler and several bloggers, drew attention to the scientific evidence demonstrating the medics´ innocence in the weeks before the trial, but science lost this one. Declan Butler, reporter has posts chronicling developments in this case; Revere at Effect Measure and Orac at Respectful Insolence have news and commentary on the verdict.
In other news:
By David Michaels
It came as no surprise to some observers that VaxGen (a biotech company in Brisbane, California) failed to meet the specifications of its contract to provide the US government with 75 million doses of a new anthrax vaccine. VaxGen has been playing fast and loose for quite some time – most notably with a famous instance of data dredging in the analysis of the clinical trials for AIDSVAX, its failed AIDS vaccine. I’ll come back to that below.
On Tuesday, the Department of Health and Human Services announced was ending its sole-supplier contract with VaxGen, which would have been worth up to $877.5 had the company been able to produce vaccines that worked. HHS officials would not discuss the reasons of the cancellation, but, according to Renae Merle’s piece in today’s Washington Post, “HHS evidently canceled the contract after VaxGen missed its deadline Monday to begin human testing because of concerns at the Food and Drug Administration about the product’s reliability.”
by Revere, cross-posted at Effect Measure
We continue our summary of the Institute of Medicine “Letter Report” on non-drug non-vaccine measures to slow or contain the spread of an influenza pandemic of a severity similar or worse than that of 1918 (see previous post on models here). The IOM report examined several analyses of historical data from 1918 to see if it was possible to obtain information on the effectiveness interventions on the pattern of outbreaks in various cities in the US. It is well known that both timing and severity varied a great deal in that pandemic. The goal was to see if differences in morbidity and mortality were related to specific actions taken in response.
Thousands of hotel workers in Boston are awaiting the results of contract negotiations between Unite Here! Local 26 and the city’s major hotel operators. Although their current contract expired on November 30, both sides agreed to extend it until February 1, 2007 while they continue to meet at the bargaining table. Unite Here! Local 26 represents about 6,000 housekeepers, waitstaff, bellmen and other hotel workers in Boston, who are seeking a five-year contract with a wage increase, and larger contributions from their employers on healthcare and retirement plans. Besides these bread and butter concerns, the housekeepers are also seeking health and safety protections, in the form of workload relief. Read the rest of this entry »
by Revere, cross-posted on Effect Measure
On December 11, The Institute of Medicine, one of the four constituent parts of the National Academies of Science, released a “letter report” reviewing the scant information on effects from non-drug measures to slow or contain spread of an influenza pandemic (available as a free download here). The report was produced after a special workshop on October 25 in which the panel participants heard from a variety of experts, with subsequent deliberations that produced the summary letter report and its recommendations.
by Revere and cross-posted at Effect Measure on October 24, 2006
An urgent communication from the World Health Organization (WHO) expresses concisely how far behind we are in being prepared for a global pandemic of influenza. Currently there are a number of vaccines under development, some of which might protect against an H5N1 virus that has become readily transmissible from person to person. But none are in production, and even if some were found adequate (not the case) and large scale production begun (far from the case), we, the world, would still be in a fix:
by Revere, cross-posted at Effect Measure
The Bush Administration hates science. Science is reality-based and some truths are politically inconvenient. But there are things that can be done. Like this:
Earlier this week, the Bush Administration released its semi-annual regulatory plan (71 Federal Register 72725, Dec 11, 2006). The 473-page document describes the President’s regulatory priorities, with the “aim of implementing an effective and results-oriented regulatory system.” The document, prepared by the Office of Management and Budget’s (OMB) Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs (OIRA), provides plenty of fodder for the blogosphere, but I’ll focus here on just one absurd statement in the Department of Labor’s section (beginning on page 72828) describing its 19 high-priority items. Here’s what the document says about crystalline silica:
